Surviving in Style

I’m driving down the interstate in the minivan, kids in tow foot in mouth disease. Thinking of how we will survive it all when the waters rise and it’s time to flee. Imagining how I can construct a survival pod that will attach to the van; to live it out in a mountain top flat dodging the reckless apathy of a culture that allowed the worst to happen. I talk to my wife about this mini-trailer to attach to the minivan and how this could sustain our lives while we drive far from the water’s rise. But we’d need a weapon to protect this mobile property. Something that would allow us to hunt big game and kill the evil doers as necessity. Surviving in style. Maybe even enough power for my laptop for a while.

This brainstorming session lasts for twenty or so minutes as I think about the unthinkable and how I should not blink. How I should have a plan to keep my family alive. How I should be able to pull together a plan for the survival of my progeny. How we should have an escape route already planned in the van to view and see. Map sketched and drawn on too many times that the route should be memorized.

Why should a young man of my age be thinking these thoughts I think, while on the way to a park festival with my young family to relax? It would seem that there is a strange odor in the air. One I can’t quit thinking about and sometimes despair. That this odor might be the smell of bad things to come for all of mankind. That when this odor comes that a man’s duty is first to his family before his country or God. That when push comes to shove, I want to watch it with my family, holding hands, cooking hot dogs until the end draws near.

I pull into the parking lot and easily find a spot. I look to my wife as she tells me to turn my brain off. That we are not going to think about this anymore while at the park festival. That we are going to enjoy life while we can with the rest of them. As we walk into the park I hear the Indian music flowing, bestowing the vibrations of meditation. As I turn off this part of my brain and begin to enjoy life again, I realize that this is the beginning of a thought process that might last. Maybe just lying dormant from Y2K and hurricanes past.